MIDLAND, TEXAS

Midland, located at an altitude of 2,779 feet on
the southern edge of the Great Plains, is doubly
distinguished as a modern and wealthy oil
capital and as one of the most isolated urban
areas in the United States. The major metropolitan
centers of Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin,
San Antonio, El Paso, and Albuquerque are all
over 300 miles away. Midland shares its isolation,
its airport, its oil and gas economy, and
a standard metropolitan area designation with
its nearby sister city, Odessa. Much of the
world links the two cities with a common
name, Midland-Odessa. The surrounding oil-producing
region of West Texas is known as
the Permian Basin in recognition of the subterranean
oil-bearing geological strata deposited
by ancient seas during the Permian Era.

Although Midland was founded in 1885 as a
ranching and agricultural depot on the Texas
and Pacific Railroad, where its midway location
between Fort Worth and El Paso inspired
its name, the city's growth and development
since the 1920s have depended disproportionately
on oil and natural gas. After major
oil field discoveries throughout the Permian
Basin during the 1920s, the city quickly developed
into the regional headquarters for one of
the most important oil-producing regions of
the United States. Odessa, in contrast, developed
into much more of a blue-collar city,
becoming home to thousands of workers in
the oil fields and related activities. Despite cycles
of boom and bust in the "awl bidness,"
Midland has steadily grown to a population
of approximately 97,000, combined into an
Odessa-Midland population of approximately
225,000.

One prominent family name in Midland
now belongs to the history of the nation. President
George H. W. Bush arrived in the Permian
Basin with his young family in the early
1950s, living briefly in Odessa and then in Midland
for most of the decade. With some investment
money in hand, Bush learned the oil
business during one of its periods of rapid
development. He was part of a stream of new
arrivals from out of state who brought a high
level of education and managerial expertise
to the area. George and Barbara Bush's son
George W. Bush grew up and attended several
grades of public school in Midland. He was
destined to become governor of Texas and
the first presidential son since John Quincy
Adams to follow his father to the White House.
Some years after the family moved their oil
interests to Houston, George W. returned to
the city he still considers his hometown to start
his own career in the oil business. Midland is
also the hometown of President George W.
Bush's wife, Laura.

Drivers approaching the city on Interstate
20 might well marvel at the tall business towers
rising in a dense cluster from the arid West
Texas plains. Those taking time to visit would
probably be equally surprised to discover a
well-planned city with many amenities usually
associated with a much larger population. Inside
the commercial and residential areas,
most signs of the West Texas desert quickly
disappear. Elegant and comfortable residential
areas display ample evidence of the city's
oil wealth along wide and well-landscaped
streets. Residents often praise the sheer convenience
of everyday life in Midland, where traffic
jams are almost nonexistent and modern
retail shopping and dining facilities developed
rapidly during the 1990s.

The 2000 census reported a Midland population
that was about 75.5 percent white,
29 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent African
American. School enrollment figures since
then, however, indicate a rapidly changing demography.
The Hispanic population, in particular,
is increasing rapidly, a change that
is already reflected in local civic and school
board elections.

In compensation for Midland's distance
from the rest of the world, much attention has
been paid to surface and air transportation. In
addition to Interstate 20, the city is encircled
and connected to Odessa by a system of modern
expressways that stimulated the remarkable
commercial and retail boom of the 1990s.
A glance at the map of North America reveals
the inspiration for another transportation
project that is under way for the Midland area.
The city lies almost exactly at the midpoint
of the most direct potential corridor between
Dallas–Fort Worth and the large northern
Mexican industrial city of Chihuahua. In the
spirit of the North American Free Trade Agreement,
a coordinated plan called La Entrada al
Pacífico is already under way in both Texas and
Mexico to build modern highway links between
Midland and Chihuahua.

Midland has long been a regional air transportation
center. During World War II the site
of the present airport was a major military
pilot-training facility. Today Midland International
Airport serves a vast area of West
Texas, including much of the trans-Pecos region.
It is the closest full-service airport to Big
Bend National Park, about a four-hour drive
away. In 1991 the airport became home to the
American Airpower Heritage Museum. With
special emphasis on the preservation of World
War II aircraft, the museum holds the largest
private collection of these planes in the United
States. Many of the aircraft are maintained in
flying condition and are the focus of the annual
October Airshow.

Given Midland's location in the desertlike
chaparral of West Texas, with an average annual
rainfall of only twelve to fourteen inches,
visitors are often surprised at the amount of
irrigated agriculture that is visible to the north
and east of the city. The crops, which typically
are cotton, alfalfa, and pecans, depend on water
from the Ogallala Aquifer, which extends
hundreds of miles north into the Great Plains
and reaches its southern extent a few miles
south of the city. Until recently, Midland was
heavily dependent on wells for its municipal
water supply. By the 1990s, however, pure water
began reaching the city via a 150-mile
pipeline from Lake Ivey in Central Texas.

Midland's premier educational facility is
Midland College, a comprehensive two-year
community college on a spacious, parklike
campus on the northern edge of the city. A
branch campus of the state university, the University
of Texas of the Permian Basin, offers a
variety of baccalaureate and graduate-degree
programs at its campus in Odessa. Midland's
high schools, along with those of Odessa, have
become nationally famous for the intensity of
their annual football jousts. H. G. Bissinger's
1990 book, Friday Night Lights, has brilliantly
documented this rivalry and the culture that
has developed around it.

Despite its prominence, football is not the
only diversion available to Midlanders. Low
humidity and mild winters make other outdoor
activities such as tennis and golf attractive
year-round. When the flat and virtually
treeless plains occasionally become too monotonous,
many Midlanders have discovered
that relief is only a short drive away, at least in
Texas miles. The alpine resorts of Cloudcroft
and Ruidoso, New Mexico, are close enough
for a Midland colony of vacation homes,
while Guadalupe National Park and the cool,
green Davis Mountains are barely three hours
away. The Nature Conservancy of Texas has
recently established the Davis Mountains Preserve
in the heart of this range, providing
Midlanders and other West Texans an opportunity
for increased awareness of the ecology
and diversity of their region.